


Nightshifters

by LizzyChrome



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Captain Ransom was a huge creep, Episode: s05e26 Equinox, Episode: s06e01 Equinox Part II, Episode: s06e02 Survival Instinct, Episode: s06e14 Memorial, Friendship, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Lower Decks, Maquis, Missing Scene, Missing Scenes, Past Abuse, What happened to the Equinox survivors?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27126938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyChrome/pseuds/LizzyChrome
Summary: How will a former Maquis relate to a former Equinox crewman? Not well. Mariah Henley joined the Maquis to defend the innocent, and isn't keen on working with Noah Lessing. But if there's anything the Delta Quadrant is good at, it's creating unlikely friendships. (Set during Season 6, "Equinox" to "Memorial." Features a handful of lower decks characters.)
Kudos: 2





	Nightshifters

Mariah Henley spent nearly two full days on the floor of the overcrowded Sickbay, the right side of her face and neck twisted into a pain that she could only describe as an icy fire. Drifting in and out of consciousness, her mind interchangeably replayed the death of her friend Jaina Jurot, and Mariah's own final attack as she tried to dodge the alien charging at her. Somewhere in the horizon between sleep and consciousness, Mariah heard someone grimly say the name "Lang," though she wasn't sure if they meant Natasha Lang or her husband Timothy. She hoped it was just a dream. At some point, she saw Lt. Tom Paris and Ensign Sai Moua covering up a shriveled gray body, in the bed where she'd last seen Ensign Laszlo Murphy lying.

Mariah wound up being one of the lucky ones, recovering with minimal deformities. She'd needed some facial reconstruction, and would have to take daily hyposprays for a while; all in all, a small price to pay for being alive. As she exited Sickbay, Mariah found the halls of Voyager strewn in rubble, and eerily quiet. She stepped carefully over fallen bulkheads and the occasional dead alien, watching her comrades silently work on repairs.

As she moved down the halls, the silence was gradually broken by a woman crying softly. Natasha Lang, security officer, sat on the floor against the wall, racking in sobs. Marina Jor had her arm around Nat's shoulders, while Samantha Wildman held her hand sympathetically. Mariah now knew that overhearing "Lang" as a casualty had been no dream.

Walking past them, Mariah softly tapped her combadge. "Henley to whoever could use a hand,"

Lt. Torres' voice came over the com. " _We can use all the help we can get in Engineering._ "

"On my—my way…" Mariah stopped to stare at a blonde woman in a gold uniform, helping Tal Celes place a curved tube back in the ceiling.

Marla Gilmore, former chief engineer of the Equinox, met Mariah's gaze with wide, timid eyes. For a moment, Tal looked worried that something might erupt. Mariah turned away silently and headed for Engineering.

Neelix held a potluck in what was left of the Mess Hall, to boost morale. But the event ultimately wound up being more of a memorial service. Fallen crewmembers' final acts of heroism were recounted by the captain, and those who had witnessed them.

Mariah breathed deeply as Lt. Walter Baxter described Jaina Jurot's fatal attempt to reach out telepathically to the aliens. Mariah relived the scene as Baxter described it. Voyager's only full-blooded Betazoid, Jurot had pressed herself against the wall on Deck 4, clutching her phaser rifle, and closed her eyes in concentration. Mariah remembered watching one of the attacking aliens stop in the air with a long hiss, and begin circling in place like a frustrated bat. Jurot's face moved just enough to tell that she was in mental conversation with the alien, as it hissed replies. Then, suddenly, a second creature curved by and struck Jurot across the face, both the monster and the Betazoid shrieking as she went down. Jurot's face shriveled into an unrecognizable gray corpse. The first alien, the one she'd been speaking to, let out a roar, and began tackling its own comrade in midair. On Baxter's orders, Mariah and the others had fired on. They killed one of the wrestling aliens, while the other took off. She'd never know which.

Vorik then recounted Laszlo Murphey's death in Engineering. A versatile officer known for changing departments as often as hair colors, Murphy hadn't been a stranger to hardship. Three years into Voyager's journey, he'd suffered the loss of his lover Ahni Jetal. But he'd carried on his duties. This final battle, Murphy had been defending the warp core from the second level of Engineering, when one of the aliens knocked him over the railing. A combination of the fall and the effects of the alien attack had done him in.

Vorik closed his eulogy saying, "Murphy and Jetal are together again." 

Finally, Samantha Wildman described how Timothy Lang had rescued herself and her daughter from their wrecked quarters. A Binjani orphan raised by humans, Tim had always used his "Binjari pain trances" to accomplish feats impossible for a human. Mariah remembered seeing him push himself to all kinds of incredible, and harmful, lengths back in the Maquis. He'd used that ability for the last time during Voyager's final battle with the Equinox, pulling the Wildmans from their burning quarters even as his own body was in flames.

And _then_ , to Mariah's shock and fury, Janeway delivered a eulogy for Captain Ransom. Some trite about how he "was a Starfleet captain in the end, though he may have forgotten that for a while." The rational part of Mariah understood that Janeway probably had to smooth feathers, in order to integrate the new five Equinox survivors with minimal conflict. But it was all Mariah could do not to shout across the Mess Hall, _And nothing of value was lost!_

Captain Janeway then presented the crew's five new additions: Marla Gilmore, Noah Lessing, James Morrow, Brian Soffin, and Angelo Tassoni. Stripped of rank, the five murderers would be expected to serve as crewman on Voyager, no doubt in the lower decks, and probably during the Night Shift—where Mariah usually worked.

Lovely.

Mariah spent the potluck afterwards offering her condolences to the friends and loved ones of the lost, and throwing indiscrete looks at the Equinox crewmembers. Determined to know who she'd be dealing with, Mariah gathered all the gossip and observations she could about Voyager's five new additions. To Marla Gilmore's credit, the engineer seemed visibly destroyed by guilt and PTSD. The four men on the other hand were harder to read, and easier to judge.

"Mariah," a low soft voice cut into her thoughts.

She turned to greet Chakotay. "Commander,"

"Your duty shift for tomorrow tonight," Chakotay handed her a PADD. "You'll be repairing a power cell on Deck 4 with Crewman Noah Lessing."

"Aye Sir."

"He shouldn't give you too hard of a time, since he owes me his life." Knowing that Chakotay had saved one of these pigs, while Jaina, Tim, and Laz were dead, only ignited her inner rage. "And Mariah," Chakotay added with some exasperation, "Let's do this the 'Starfleet way,' alight?"

That was code among former Maquis for, _no striking fellow officers, however much they might deserve it._

Grimacing, Mariah gave him a curt nod. "Understood."

* * *

Per Janeway's orders, all projects and decks where Equinox crewmen were working would be closely monitored, until the captain was confident that none of them would try betraying Voyager again. Mariah hated being supervised, but she'd take it over being left alone with one of these creeps. Fortunately, the guard on duty was Lydia Andersen, a friendly woman from Denmark who never seemed to care what anyone did as long as they weren't a security threat.

The man who stood waiting next to the damaged component was a young Black human with a shaved head. He looked and carried himself like a typical Starfleet darling. Those innocent boyish features couldn't possibly be more ironic. That murder had no right to wear that green science uniform, or that com badge. There was another irony, Mariah realized with some humor; she was actually protective of Starfleet's name, now.

"Crewman Henley," Lessing held out his hand with a sickening politeness.

"Crewman Lessing," Henley glanced at Andersen, who just stared ahead indifferently. Turning back to Lessing, Mariah said, "Let's get started," and walked past him without shaking his hand.

Mariah quickly volunteered to do the close-up work, crouching inside the section of the wall where they removed the panel, so she wouldn't have to look at the Equinox man's putrid face. Lessing sat outside, handing her tools and entering codes as she needed. He continuously made attempts at conversation, and Mariah impressed herself with how professionally she deflected them.

It took almost three hours for Lessing to finally push the wrong button.

"Guess I'll have to get used to being a night owl," he said off-handedly, as he handed Mariah the next tool. "I suppose Captain Janeway put us Equinox felons here on the nightshift so she wouldn't have to put up with the sight of us."

 _Her_ and _the majority of the crew_ , Mariah thought. She refused to dignify Lessing's comment with a verbal response.

Trying again, Lessing added, "I'm surprised there was enough room on the night shift for all of us."

Mariah heard herself blurt out, "Courtesy your old captain."

She didn't pause her work to look at Lessing, so she didn't see his face. For several moments, the only sound was the hum of her modulator echoing inside the gutted wall.

"If you an opinion about Captain Ransom," Lessing finally said evenly, "You can just keep it to yourself."

"You sad your captain's dead?" Mariah said, matching his flat tone. "I've got a few dead friends too. A lot of them died _saving_ other people."

After some silence, Lessing spoke again, with forced politeness. "What were their names?"

Mariah debated for a moment whether to dignify his condescending tone with a response. But the desire to rant got the better of her. Keeping her head inside the wall, she replied, "Tim Lang was one. I knew him from the Maquis—he was Tim Rogers back then. He was Bijani. Raised by humans."

"I've heard of the Bijani," Lessing commented. "Captain Ransom had a friend back home, he used to talk about often. Nomadic species, with no homeworld. They look identical to us," Mariah winced at the insinuation that she and him could belong to one group of any kind enough to be called "us." "…but they can go into 'pain trances' and accomplish feats few other species can."

"At the cost of their own health," Mariah added bitterly. "Tim could withstand damn near anything—Cardassian torture, alien experiments, Neelix's cooking. When he and Nat hooked up, they were one of the first pairs that helped ease the transition between the Maquis and the Starfleets, like Torres and Kim. Or Jor and Jurot." Maria held out a hand without looking up from the compartment. "Hyperspanner."

Lessing handed her the tool. "Jurot, she was a Betazoid right?"

She gave a nod, before remembering Lessing couldn't see her from where she crouched with her head in the wall.

"Our last." Mairah said flatly. "Our last full-blooded Betazoid, after losing Suder. She died trying to talk down the aliens peacefully with her telepathy."

Lessing replied in a sympathetic tone, "Those things really _are_ demons. Or as close to them as any—"

" _No_!" Mariah barked, pushing herself out of the wall. She sat up on her knees, to face him. "They were _angry_ that _their_ friends were murdered. You know what happened when Jaina died?" Lessing blinked slowly. Mariah fired on, "She ran up to one that was circling overhead, closed her eyes. And it was _working_. That alien was _listening_ to her. It was just hissing, and she was just moving her head with her eyes shut tight, but you could tell they were talking. Then another one came swooping down and knocked her in the face. Know what happened next?"

Lessing slowly shook his head.

"That first one, the alien she'd been talking to, it attacked its own comrade, for hurting her. We shot one of them down, I don't know which." She chewed her lip, pondering how to phrase her next thought. "It was all just a typical messy battle. One that started because as far as _they_ knew, they were being kidnapped and tortured to death, by a _Starfleet_ ship." Grinding her jaw, she slowly turned back to the Equinox officer. "I don't blame the _aliens_ for my friends' deaths, Lessing."

She began moving to reenter the wall. Then, suddenly remembering something else, she whipped back to face Lessing. "And you know how Tim Lang died? The Binjari? He ran into the Wildman's wrecked quarters to save Sam and her daughter. You may have met Naomi, little girl about yey tall. That was during our last battle with _your ship_. That blast didn't come from the aliens, it came from the _Equinox_. Your captain almost flambéed the only child onboard our ship. Tim hauled her out, and then her mother, all while he was _burring alive_."

She kept her eyes locked with his long enough to see he got the point, then climbed back into the wall.

After a while, Lessing said, "I talked to your chief conn officer, Lt. Paris, at the potluck yesterday."

"Did you now."

"He said he wasn't going to judge any of us. 'Everybody has a past.'"

"Good for Lt. Paris."

"According to him, a lot of people in this crew have red on their ledger."

Mariah froze, inside the gutted wall. _Oh, you did_ not _! Don't even_ try _to go there!_

"A quarter of your crew are former terrorists. You have a Borg drone working in Astrometrics. A con at the helm, who killed three officers and then lied about it…"

Mariah was so infuriated she couldn't even speak for a few moments. But she would gladly have broken his nose solely on Paris's, Seven of Nine's, or her Maquis comrades' behalf's.

Lessing rambled on, "I guess I can see why Commander Chakotay saved me from that psychopath Janeway, since _he_ used to have his own loyalties—"

Mariah pushed herself back out of the wall, her fist tightening around her tool. "Don't you _dare_ talk about my captain, either one of them! You call Captain _Janeway_ a 'psychopath?'"

"Why not? She's made alliances with the Borg—"

"To save the galaxy from Species 8472, who were a bigger threat! _Everything_ Janeway's done has been for the safety of _others_ , _including_ getting us stranded out here! She's passed up chance after chance to get us home, to get herself home to her fiancé before he gave up on her, because it would've meant hurting someone innocent! _Your_ precious Captain Ransom _slaughtered_ sentient life form after life form just—"

"—like your precious Commander Chakotay slaughtered Cardassians on a regular basis?"

Mariah was screaming now. "Don't compare your sick experiments to the Maquis you Federation fuck! You're exactly why the Maquis started, you Starfleet hypocrites, pretending your society was so saintly and heroic while you screwed people over! The Maquis fought to protect our families, not kill innocents for convenience!"

"Hey," Lydia Andersen put her hand to the phaser on her belt, giving Mariah a warning glance.

Mariah had almost forgotten the security guard was there. But she was too angry to care. She fired back at Lessing, "Chakotay saved your worthless ass because he's a beatnik who can't eat a chicken patty without feeling guilty!"

Lessing was leaning away from her, visibly intimidated. He opened his mouth but she cut him off, still yelling.

"Tom Paris killed those three people on _accident_ , and felt guilty enough to turn himself in a week later! Seven of Nine was a _drone_ , how could you even _think_ to blame her for what she did? _No one_ on this ship is like you!"

"Alright that's enough," Andersen's soft Danish accent was stern as she glanced between Mariah and Lessing. "Drop the subject and get back to work."

Mariah closed her eyes and bit her lip, taking a deep breath. She didn't want to make this situation any more of a catastrophe for her shipmates than it already was.

But Lessing seemed determined to prove Janeway's guilt. "Well what about, what about Tuvix? Yeah, I read about that in your ship's databa—"

Mariah's eyes flew open. " _Two_ lives who were there first, versus _one_ month-old transporter accident. Needs of the many; owner of the body trumps invasive parasite; case closed. Nice try asshole!"

Though Lydia Andersen's posture was still stern, she made a face that silently granted Mariah, _touché_!

Lessing fumbled, "But it's pretty much still the same—"

"It is _not_ the same! Those aliens didn't invade your ship, didn't threaten any of you until you kidnapped them and brought them there! And not even to save yourselves from dying, you killed them for _fuel_!"

"We _needed_ to fuel to stop from dying! We were nearly out of food _and_ defenses! Not everyone's lucky enough to have a Borg drone with magical nanoprobes, or an alien guide to the quadrant—"

"That wasn't 'luck' Lessing, that's called compassion!" Mariah couldn't believe she had to explain this to this idiot. "The reason Voyager has Borg superheroes, Talaxian guides, and magical Ocampan fairy princesses to get us out of all these death traps is because Janeway took them on. She put her compassion for others before her desire to get herself home, and it's paid off for all of us. Shit, even our Doctor's probably been far more resourceful since he's been allowed to expand his program, than he'd be if we'd just deleted his ethical subroutines for short-term convenience!"

A voice came from Andersen's combadge: " _Baxter to lower deck security, I need you on Deck 2_."

Andersen replied, "On my way, but we might have some trouble with Lessing and Henley too."

" _Dully noted_."

Andersen threw a last warning look at Lessing and Mariah as she hurried off down the hall.

Lessing was gapping for a comeback, but Mariah wasn't going to let him have it.

Standing up, Mariah said, "We all have pasts here and we all had allegiances, but one thing we always had in common was basic human morals! I can't think of a single crewmember on board, not one, who would do what you did on their own free will!"

"You think we were in our right minds?" Lessing matched her stance. "You _spoiled_ …" His large dark eyes swept the hall. "You have an Intrepid-class ship, with functioning replicators and warp drive, and a crew of two hundred to fall back on! We had a tiny cruiser ship, with a crew of less than a hundred to start with, and none of the luxuries—"

"Hey!" Mariah's face spread into a massive, bitter smile. "That sounds a lot like life in the Maquis!" She shook her head, still grinning furiously at him. "So that's what happens when you take a Starfleet's luxuries away and put them in the same place as a Maquis crew! They start murdering aliens to get their warm beds back sooner! Oh, Starfleet _is_ God."

"Then why you still here? Why're you still wearing that com badge?"

"Because I've actually come to respect what Starfleet is _supposed_ to stand for!"

"You're acting real Starfleet right now!"

"You wanna see my Maquis side?" Mariah brought her tool around like slashing a knife, leaving a long burning mark across Lessing's face.

Lessing stumbled back, grabbing his burned cheek in shock. Then he swung at her with his fist. She dodged his blow easily, and turned to stalk away. Still heaving in pain, Lessing picked up the heavy tool kit and swung it into the back of Mariah's head.

By the time Lt. Walter Baxter and his security team arrived, Mariah and Lessing had both discarded their tools, resorting to their fists and teeth. It took multiple guards to pull them off each other. Mariah eventually shook herself free of the guards holding her arms and brought her hands up, silently agreeing to go quietly. But she made sure to toss Lessing a middle finger on the way out.

They were both treated to a furious reprimand from Captain Janeway. The captain was already in a sour mood, as another Voyager and Equinox crewmember had already come to blows in one of the transporter rooms—the initial security threat Baxter had called Andersen away for. All fighting parties were confined to quarters for a week, and stripped of holodeck privileges for a month.

In the grand scheme of everything Voyager was undergoing, the incident barely made weekly gossip.

* * *

One by one, the Equinox five began earning Janeway's trust over the next few months.

Marla Gilmore was the most quickly accepted into the crew. Aside from her visible remorse and PTSD, Marla had also directly helped Voyager in defeating the Equinox. By a happy coincidence for Marla, Engineering also seemed to be peppered with the people best suited to get along with her. Lt. Torres, though initially hostile to Gilmore, was soon praising her engineering skills, and openly bonding with her over what a pig the Equinox's first officer Max Burke had been. Marla and Joe Carrey reminisced together about their home country of Ireland. And Marina Jor, the half-Betazoid who could confirm Marla's remorse and loyalty, also worked in the engine room. Before long, Marla was a welcomed, if timid, member of the Engineering team.

Angelo Tassoni, an Italian workaholic, was fully open about his priorities; he just wanted to stay alive. Many in the crew, the Maquis especially, seemed to appreciate Tassoni's candor. Janeway begrudgingly accepted Angelo's self-professed attempts to "suck up" to her, by bringing her coffee and searching from Astrometrics for helpful places for the ship to dock at. It was in fact Tassoni who had located the Markonian Outpost, a space port where Voyager could finally get some much-needed repairs and shore leave.

At that Markonian Outpost, Brain Sofin wound up saving Naomi Wildman from falling prey to an alien kidnapper. His experience under Captain Ransom had taught Sofin much about master manipulators, helping him catch on to the predator grooming Naomi. He exposed the man as a slaver, and the predator was arrested. Sofin was personally commended by the Outpost's security, Sam Wildman, and Captain Janeway.

Voyager left the Outpost with a terminally ill Bajoran woman named Marika Wilkarah—a former drone, from Seven of Nine's old Unimatrix. James "Jack" Morrow—the Equinox biologist, initially so angry to be stuck on Voyager—offered all his time to Marika, becoming her personal medical supervisor, and devised some tactics that actually increased her life by a few weeks.

Mariah Henley found herself slowly accepting those four from the Equinox, but still couldn't look Lessing in the eye.

As the months rolled on, Lt. Torres had a near-death experience and became a born-again Klingon; the Doctor experimented in daydreaming, with disastrous results; and a handful of the senior officers went crazy again. In other words, nothing changed.

Until the day Starfleet made contact.

Like most big events on Voyager, it happened in the middle of the day, when Mariah was fast asleep. Her recurring anxiety dream about searching the ship for the last bowl of Neelix's marsupial surprise was cut short by her friend's voice blaring from her com badge.

" _Chell to Henley! Chell to Henley respond!_ "

Without taking her face out of her pillow, Mariah fisted up her com badge from the bed stand. "Chell," she said quietly, "we had better be at Earth, or else someone better have died."

" _Closer to the first one_."

Henley rolled over and shot up in her bed. " _What_?"

"Voyager just received a message from the Alpha Quadrant! A Dr. Broccoli, or something, I don't remember his name, he stabilized a micro-wormhole to act as a two-way communication for Voyager and Starfleet command!" After a pause, the Bolian added, "Just thought you'd want to know."

Mariah was too stunned to offer a sufficient response. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I'm off to contact the rest of the nightshift! Uh, who else _is_ on the night shift?"

"I," she rubbed one eye. "think their names should be listed on the duty roster." She was still in a daze. "Henley out."

When she entered the mess hall for breakfast a few days later, everyone was talking about recent news they'd received from home. Gerron and T'Vora, a Bajoran and Vulcan respectively, were discussing a few old Maquis comrades who'd turned up alive.

"Ro Laren survived the Dominion massacre," Gerron was telling T'Vora. "And then she led her own resistance cell against them, until the Bajoran military took her on. She's security officer of Deep Space Nine now!"

"I found out my old fiancé's alive," Mariah said joining their table.

"The one who worked with explosives?" Gerron asked, pouring himself some more of Neelix's Leola Soda.

Mariah nodded, digging into her omelet. "She's working with fireworks now. She got captured by the Federation right before the Dominion's massacre. Then got an early release and a pardon for helping Starfleet during the Dominion War. She's married now, living on some new colony. Adopted two orphans whose parents were killed by the Dominion."

"You are happy for her," T'Vora observed.

"Well I didn't expect Sadie to wait. God knows I didn't."

The Vulcan seemed impressed. "I have always admired how logical you are, for a human."

Her mouth full of omelet, Mariah joked, "That's racist."

Low voices from a couple tables away caught Mariah's attention.

"…I don't know what to tell them."

"Starfleet had no right to blow our private records to our families."

The first voice was Marla Gilmore. The second belonged to Lessing.

Gilmore replied, "I think we've forfeited our right to privacy, Noah."

"No Marla, don't let these hypocrites make you think you deserve this abuse!"

Gilmore snapped, "Janeway's not the 'abusive' captain, Noah."

"What are you talking about? Ransom protected us, he did everything to get us home!"

"He did everything to get _himself_ home, sending _us_ into the meat grinder. You know most of our fatalities were after we started murdering those aliens. He and Max were just that good at making us think they were doing us a favor, that we owed them…" Gilmore's voice was full of regret and revulsion.

"You know what Janeway did to me," Lessing said darkly.

"And _you_ know what _our_ captain did to Seven of Nine!" Gilmore retorted. "You knew what he and Max had us doing to those aliens all those years." Her voice lowered to a hiss. "You and the other men onboard, you all knew how Rudy and Max were treating us, treating the women."

Mariah froze with her fork in the air, her blood turning to ice.

Lessing said flatly, "What the hell are you on about now, Marla."

"You know damn well what I mean Noah," Marla snarled. "And a part of me did too, all along. Ransom and Max were just master manipulators, always making everyone think they owed them, and that whatever they wanted for themselves was for the greater good."

"Stop being a drama queen Marla, you _liked_ Max _and_ the Captain. You're just feeling guilty about it _now_ and you're—"

Mariah heard a loud slap. She glanced over her shoulder to see Gilmore stand up, giving Lessing a hard stare. Lessing was holding his face, staring up at Gilmore in shock. Gilmore seized her tray and left the table, heading for the opposite end of the room.

People all around the Mess Hall were staring. Mariah exchanged shocked glances with T'Vorah and Gerron. Mariah realized this should have been obvious. Torture and murder hadn't been beneath Ransom and Burke, not even towards their own species. That, and knowing how manipulative both were, and how the Equinox was without a holodeck, added a horrifying weight to Marla Gilmore's visible PTSD. Mariah herself was being taken back to Turkana IV, to a childhood she did everything possible to forget.

Her fork shaking, Mariah forced herself to take another bite, and continue eating like nothing was wrong.

* * *

The incident that changed Mariah's mind about Noah Lessing began, like most others, during her "nighttime." She came awake initially not knowing where she was, or _who_ she was.

Last she remembered, she had been shooting madly—"mad" here being used in every possible sense of the word—and had stopped only when she noticed her commanding officer vaporizing bodies on the ground, and realized that the shootout was over. She'd killed dozens of people, including several small children. Shot them while they were running from her. After blasting a row of adult colonists, she'd moved onto the crowd of boys and girls without any thought at all, like shooting down Takla pins during a game of D'rat. As soon as shot the first little boy, her friend Crewman Gerron followed her lead, helping her shoot down the entire group of fleeing, crying children. The youngest was maybe a year old, being carried by an older sister, herself no more than seven.

Why had she killed children? And why had she encouraged Gerron to follow her?

Mariah gazed around her surroundings, struggling to make sense of everything. For a moment, she was sure she was in a clearing in a forest. But looking at the trees, she found herself struggling to decide if they looked like brown wood, or gray metal. The bright light in the distance, was that the sun rising, or the bedroom lights over her bed on Voyager?

Her mind finally cleared, and she found herself standing in the middle of her quarters, in her pajamas, holding an invisible weapon like a mime.

Mariah couldn't remember sleepwalking once in her life. Nor having such a vivid dream. It was still clear in her memory, like something that had really happened, and was slowly coming back to her.

What species were those colonists? Where and how had that massacre happened? How and when had Mariah and Gerron, Voyager crewmembers, been _able_ to partake in such an event, much less willing? And what the hell was "D'rat?"

She touched her head. This wasn't a dream, this was a memory. A real, if incomplete, memory. But an impossible one.

She was going insane. _Oh_ _god._ It had happened to the senior staff over and over, and now it was happening to Crewman Mariah Henley. She was under alien influence, or radiation poisoning, or Seven of Nine's nanoprobes. Pretty soon she'd probably start phasering her shipmates and steal a shuttlecraft. Not wanting to add too all the headaches poor Captain Janeway was probably experiencing every week, Henley quickly hit her com badge.

"Henley to Sickbay!"

A soft, low hum answered her, comparable to the proverbial "ringing in your ears." She recognized it as the com system's busy signal. For a moment, she relaxed in the knowledge that she wasn't the only one having problems, then began fretting over the fact that the whole ship might be going insane. (Again.)

Figuring she might get called up to some emergency shift now, Mariah tossed on her uniform, and hurried out of her quarters. She wasn't three doors down the hall when she heard the sound of someone crying from around the corner, a woman. Coming around, she saw Jenny Delaney on the floor, in her green science uniform, with her face in her hands. Her gold-suited twin Megan was leaning over her, attempting to calm her.

"Henley!" Megan stood up. "Something's wrong with Jenny. She keeps saying she's killed people, partook in a massacre of some kind."

"She's not the only one," Mariah sighed.

Megan's brow furrowed in confusion.

"It's half the ship," another voice said faintly.

It was Annalie Blackhorse, a young botanist who occasionally did night shifts. She walked weakly down the hall, supported by Lt. Walter Baxter.

"It's not real," Baxter assured all of them. "It's some kind of alien brainwashing. The captain just had a breakdown in Astrometrics. They Doctor's ordered everyone affected to the Mess Hall."

"When?" Mariah made a face.

"A few minutes ago."

"I was awake a few minutes ago, I didn't hear—" when Baxter nodded, she realized that a lot of people probably hadn't "heard" the Doctor's announcement.

"We'll be fine," Water assured his girlfriend.

"I know we will," Blackhorse slowly pointed at an empty spot on the floor. "But what about him?" she laughed weakly. "Th-they should've known, shooting at us wasn't the way to get a _head_ in life." She whispered deliriously, "Was that too soon? That was probably awful. Let's _head_ on down to the mess hall." She laughed deliriously, before slumping unconscious in Baxter's arms.

Once in the Mess Hall, those mentally functioning well enough to do so began debating venomously over whether the incident was real or not. Gerron had memories of the incident, but his didn't match up with Mariah's.

"I saw you there," the young Bajoran said. "But I wasn't shooting alongside you. I accidently _killed_ you."

"Well I'm pretty sure I'd remember _that_ ," Mariah said.

Jenny Delaney was lying on her side, hugging her cot. "Do you think it's real?"

"No." Mariah said quickly.

"How do you know?" Megan asked over the tea she was pouring for her sister.

"Because! I've never…it can't be, no one here would do that! Look none of us here on Voyager are saints, I've killed plenty of Cardassians in the Maquis, but that was in battle! I may not know what's going on but I know myself, and I'm not a murder!"

"It's real." Noah Lessing said with conviction.

He sat hunched on a cot a few feet away.

Mariah smiled cruelly at him. "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you. Misery loves company."

"But that's exactly it, Henley," Noah moved slightly to look at her over his shoulder. His voice was feint, his face blank. "You said yourself just now, you're not a murderer, so how would you know what it actually feels like to be one? Well I am one, and this is exactly the same. This feels exactly like it did on the Equinox. The only difference is my victims looked a little more human this time." More quietly he added, "You're denying it because you don't want to think you'd be capable of it."

Mariah liked to think she was above such petty denial. "I'm capable of plenty of stupid shit. That's why I'm a crewman and not a lieutenant. But Captain Janeway—"

"Is your captain." Lessing said. "You've trusted her for years. And Tuvok, Chakotay, and Torres. You don't want to think that any of _them_ might be capable of _making you_ capable of…"

To Mariah's shock, Lessing began to cry softly into his hand.

The two other Equinox crewmen who'd been sitting with him, Marla Gilmore and James Marrow, began trying to comfort him. Marla took his hand quietly, but her face didn't look particularly compassionate. In fact, she looked like she thought it was about time Noah finally recognized their crimes.

"Ransom was a father to us," Gilmore said flatly, to everyone watching. "We served him for _years_ before getting lost in the Delta Quadrant. And before we began killing those aliens, he'd gotten us out of a lot of scrapes, like Captain Janeway did for you. And he loved to remind us of all we owed him…"

She needn't have gone beyond the word "father." That itself, that single word, spun the entire situation around like a Daboo wheel. Mariah could stand by what she'd said before; no one on _Voyager_ was like the Equinox five. But a little girl in the ghettos of Turkana IV was _very_ much like them.

Mariah moved around Lessing's cot and knelt in front of him.

" _I_ had a father, Lessing." Her voice was Starfleet professional, but not the forced polite one she usually used around the Equinox crew. She spoke as if revealing a sincere lesson to a child or friend. "I had a dad. I owed him my existence, the food on my plate, the roof over my head, and he never let me forget it. So I let him do whatever he wanted. To me, and to my little brother." She brought one shoulder up in an ironic shrug. "He wasn't a 'bad guy.' He was our dad. He bought us ice cream, taught us how to play cards, helped us with our homework. So whatever methods of discipline he used, however he wanted to have us to 'thank' him for dinner…"

It occurred to Mariah that she was revealing this extremely personal information to a whole handful of people.

"When the law finally got us out of that house, my brother and I were placed in a facility for abused children. And our counselor told us something I'll never forget." Mariah swallowed. "He said, 'Everything your father did for you came with being a parent. You don't owe him any more than what comes with being a child.'" Her eyes flicked to Gilmore and Marrow, then back at Lessing. "Captain Janeway hasn't made the sacrifices she has because she's some kind of saint; she does it because she swore to do all that when she became a captain. She knew that when she accepted her position. And that's why she's never asked any more of us than what a Federation crew is supposed to give. Captain Ransom wanted to murder his way back home, and he had no right to ask you to help him do it. You didn't owe it to help Ransom commit those acts, and you don't owe him your unconditional respect. Love him if you want, but you don't owe him _shit_."

Lessing stared at her, wiping his nose, and for a minute she thought he was going to berate her again, for insulting "his captain." But instead he only looked down at his hands in his lap.

* * *

Lessing was wrong. It _wasn't_ real.

Well, the memories technically were real, but no one on Voyager owned them. They were coming from a "memorial," a beacon generating the memories of long-dead aliens, to ensure that the massacre they'd experienced was never forgotten. The device had been programmed to bring in elements from the visitors' personal lives. This, as Neelix explained, was why he had seen Commander Chakotay in his "memory," and why his persona had been someone protective of children. The device wanted the receivers to relate to the memories as much as possible.

Mariah and Lessing worked silently in the transporter room. It was a slow night.

"Henley," Lessing said without looking at her. "I owe you one."

When he didn't elaborate, she glanced up slightly, viewing him out of the corner of her eye.

"For that speech. For splashing me awake." Noah drubbed his fingers on his consol. "Ransom was a father; an abusive father." He added, "Not that that excuses me following him."

Mariah didn't know what to say at first. "You're young. You were probably the Ensign Kim of your senior staff."

He looked at her. "Ensign Kim?"

"He's basically the baby of the senior officers here on Voyager." She hesitated. "You lost most of your entire crew. I can't imagine," she grimaced, and looked back down at her consol. "I was never good at the whole sympathy thing."

Noah breathed deeply, as if preparing to say something uncomfortable.

"I'd like to buy you a drink."

Mariah's fingers froze over her consol.

"Man to man," he said. "I know you don't swing my way."

"Actually, I like a bit of peanut butter _and_ jelly," Mariah explained. "But I'm not interested in dating anybody any at the moment." She looked up at Noah. "But I can always use a friend."

Lessing was watching her with an unreadable face.

"And a drink."

"Alright." He returned his attention to his lifeless console. "What time?"

"How about right after this shift," Mariah suggested. "There's a program some of us nightshift crewmen always hang out at after shifts. The senior staff used to be all over it, the first few years out here. But they lost interest for some reason, so a few of us hijacked it. It's called Sandrine's. Based off a real bar in France, on Earth. I can promise you, a bunch of our fellow nightshifters will be there. Let's get see if we can't get Gilmore or Marrow or someone to come with. Sandrine could use some fresh customers."

Noah made a face just short of smiling. "' _Nightshifters'_ …"

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the characters in this story have some basis in canon, though I've embellished on their backgrounds and sometimes species. I relied heavily on the website Memory Alpha for the list of named and shown Voyager crewmembers, and all the episodes they appeared in.
> 
> Mariah Henley is from the Season 1 episode "Learning Curve," along with Kenneth Dalby, Gerron, and Chell. None are ever seen or mentioned again except for Chell, but there's no reason to think any of them are dead.
> 
> Jurot is from Season 5's "Counterpoint." As a Betazoid, she must hide in stasis with Tuvok and Vorik. In the next season's "Dragon's Teeth" however, Janeway laments not having a Betazoid to help her tell if the Vaaduar are lying. A popular fan theory is that Jurot was one of the casualties in "Equinox." In canon, her first name isn't mentioned; the name Jaina is a "Star Wars" reference.
> 
> "Murphy" and "Lang" are two names that seem to be doubled on Voyager. The two Ensign Murphys look similar enough to plausibly be the same character, with a change in uniform, hair and actors. (Many recurring characters on "Star Trek" change actors with no subtlety at all.) The two Langs however are much more difficult to pass off as the same individual. Timothy Lang is last seen in the beginning of "Equinox, Part II;" later, in Season 7's "Imperfection," Seven of Nine mentions his death.
> 
> The Binjani are introduced in the movie-game "Star Trek: Borg."


End file.
